Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Liberal Nuns (sigh) Gunning for Ryan

A group of Catholic sisters broke bread Tuesday with the poor and homeless at Milwaukee's St. Benedict the Moor Catholic Church, part of a nine-state bus tour drawing attention to proposed Republican budget cuts and the Catholic charities they say would be harmed by them.

"The current House budget is going to devastate people at the margins," said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Washington-based Network, the Catholic social justice lobby singled out in a recent Vatican rebuke of U.S. Catholic sisters.

I'd love to ask these nuns about their 2008 vote. Visiting with the poor is great, but seriously, this political act is getting old. Paul Ryan is being charitable in not debating these people because he would (respectfully) demolish their straw man arguments. Did the nuns actually read Ryan's budget, or are they simply following the hackneyed talking points emanating from the DNC?

Here's Paul Ryan's excellent Georgetown speech. Compare the substance and seriousness of Ryan with the shrill, empty, emotive rhetoric of the liberal nuns.

And here you can read Ryan's reasoned article from the National Catholic Register in which he explains his budget, backing up his points with the Church's social teaching. An excerpt:

Our budget ends welfare for those who don’t need it, but strengthens welfare programs for those who do. Government safety-net programs have been stretched to the breaking point in recent years, failing the very citizens who need help the most. When solidarity and subsidiarity are in balance, civil society is revitalized, not displaced. We rightly pride ourselves on looking out for one another — and government has an important role to play in that. But relying on distant government bureaucracies to lead this effort just hasn’t worked.

This is why I'm convinced that these nuns have not read or frankly care to read the budget plan, or to engage Paul Ryan in an honest discussion. I think this restlessness, anger and hostility is rooted more in the fact that Ryan is a conservative, articulate Catholic who is pro-life, etc., and that he is more than willing to tilt lances with those social justice Catholics on the left who were sure that they were the sempiternal guardians of Church social teaching.